Misha Pavel, PhD, is the Pro­gram Direc­tor in charge of the National Sci­ence Foundation’s Smart and Con­nected Health port­fo­lio, designed to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment and use of inno­v­a­tive health­care approaches that are pre­ven­tive, proac­tive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused on well-being rather than dis­ease. Con­cur­rently, he has an appoint­ment as a Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing, and a joint appoint­ment in the Depart­ment of Med­ical Infor­mat­ics and Clin­i­cal Epi­demi­ol­ogy, at Ore­gon Health and Sci­ence Uni­ver­sity. Prior to his aca­d­e­mic career, he was a mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal staff at Bell Lab­o­ra­to­ries, where his research included net­work analy­sis and mod­el­ing. Misha Pavel is a Senior Mem­ber of IEEE.

The goal of the Smart and Con­nected Health (SCH) Pro­gram is to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment and use of inno­v­a­tive approaches that would sup­port the much needed trans­for­ma­tion of health­care from reac­tive and hospital-centered to pre­ven­tive, proac­tive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused on well-being rather than dis­ease. Approaches that part­ner technology-based solu­tions with biobe­hav­ioral health research are sup­ported by mul­ti­ple agen­cies of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment includ­ing the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF) and the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH). The pur­pose of this pro­gram is to develop next gen­er­a­tion health care solu­tions and encour­age exist­ing and new research com­mu­ni­ties to focus on break­through ideas in a vari­ety of areas of value to health, such as sen­sor tech­nol­ogy, net­work­ing, infor­ma­tion and machine learn­ing tech­nol­ogy, deci­sion sup­port sys­tems, mod­el­ing of behav­ioral and cog­ni­tive processes, as well as sys­tem and process mod­el­ing. Effec­tive solu­tions must sat­isfy a mul­ti­tude of con­straints aris­ing from clinical/medical needs, social inter­ac­tions, cog­ni­tive lim­i­ta­tions, bar­ri­ers to behav­ioral change, het­ero­gene­ity of data, seman­tic mis­match and lim­i­ta­tions of cur­rent cyber­phys­i­cal sys­tems. Such solu­tions demand mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary teams ready to address tech­ni­cal, behav­ioral and clin­i­cal issues rang­ing from fun­da­men­tal sci­ence to clin­i­cal practice.

Due in large part to advances in high through­put and con­nec­tive com­put­ing, med­i­cine is at the cusp of a sector-wide trans­for­ma­tion that — if nur­tured through rig­or­ous sci­en­tific inno­va­tion — promises to accel­er­ate dis­cov­ery, improve patient out­comes, decrease costs, and address the com­plex­ity of such chal­leng­ing health prob­lems as can­cer, heart dis­ease, dia­betes and neu­ro­log­i­cal degen­er­a­tion. Keep read­ing